


Wild, Wild Wasteland

by MondoMamaBrains



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-typical language, Gen, canon-typical weirdness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-18
Updated: 2016-07-18
Packaged: 2018-07-24 18:02:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7517944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MondoMamaBrains/pseuds/MondoMamaBrains
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just another Fallout: New Vegas fic. Follows Virginia Marshall, Courier Six, on her journey through the Wasteland.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wild, Wild Wasteland

**Author's Note:**

> So, I started this little fic as a writing exercise for myself! Essentially I'm writing Courier Six's experiences throughout my playthrough of Fallout: New Vegas. As such, it will start out following canon pretty closely, though it may or may not diverge the further I get.
> 
> *This game was played with Wild Wasteland toggled on, so there will probably be some canon-typical tonal inconsistencies.
> 
> **A lot of the NPC dialogue is taken directly from the .txt files from the game, and thus credit for all canon dialogue goes to the writers of Fallout: New Vegas

The first thing she saw, when the patches of haze cleared from her eyes, was a ceiling fan spinning listlessly overhead, blades dragging slowly through the air as if propelled by an onerous sense of duty rather than an electric motor. She watched the fan float overhead for what felt like minutes but probably weren’t, afraid to blink. The act of closing her eyes threatened to plunge her back into the darkness she had just surfaced from. Instead she lay staring up at the ceiling, listening to her own rattling breaths and reveling in the slow throb of her head and the feeling of sweat trickling down her neck. Before much time had passed like this, however, the dry desert air got the better of her. In the fraction of a second it took her to flutter her eyelids closed and open again, there was a flash, a snippet of memory, so brief it was more like a primitive imprint.

_Cold night air in her face. The flicker of neon from the New Vegas Strip in the distance. Adrenaline coursing through her bloodstream. Ropes biting at her wrists as she squirmed._

_A man. A man in a checkered suit._ /p>

_“Sorry you got twisted up in this scene, kid. From where you’re kneeling, it must seem like an eighteen-karat run of bad luck.”_

_A gun in her face. A coil of anger in her gut._

_“Truth is, the game was rigged from the start.”_

_Fury igniting, burning as brightly as the muzzle flare from the gun as it fired._

That was it. That was all she had left of the past several days. The man in the checkered suit had left her for dead, with a single image and a deep, untempered fury.

Of the many questions she was left with, the most pressing was where she was, quickly followed by how she was still sucking air. A gunshot wound to the head wasn’t something that most people licked with a little rest. She’d never much cared for luck, but maybe she was luckier than she thought. She blinked again. That her view was of a ceiling and not the Nevada sky – or six feet of dirt – told her that she had been moved. Why, and by whom, remained a mystery.

Without thinking she heaved herself up on her elbows and swung her feet over the bed, and was rewarded with a pang of dizziness.

At least she could move.

At least she could feel _anything_.

“You’re awake. How ‘bout that.”

When her vision had come back into focus and her stomach had climbed down from her throat, she saw that she was not alone. A deeply creased forehead and bristly white mustache stared back at her from a chair at her bedside. She lurched forward, unsure what she had intended with the motion. A warm, steady hand caught her shoulder and pushed her back up into a sitting position.

“Whoa, easy there. Easy.” The man cooed in a voice typically reserved for startled animals. “You’ve been out cold for a couple of days now.”

Her mouth opened, but all that she could summon forth was a rattling groan, like gravel under a boot.

The man looked concerned, the creases in his forehead growing even deeper. “Why don’t you relax a second. Get your bearings.”

She huffed, but sank more fully into the cot that, evidently, she had been camped on for the past several days. Still wary, but resigned.

Seemingly satisfied, the man leaned forward, “Let’s see what the damage is. How ‘bout your name. Can you tell me your name?”

The answer rose to her mouth before she could think up a suitable alias. “Virginia… Marshall.” When her voice finally came it was dry and cracked and caked with dust.

Thin white eyebrows furrowed. “Huh. Can’t say it’s what I’d have picked for ya. But if that’s your name, that’s your name.” He shrugged. “I’m Doc Mitchell. Welcome to Goodsprings.”

Virginia only blinked in greeting, feeling dazed.

The doctor remained unfazed and began rummaging through an old leather doctor’s bag next to his chair. “Now, I hope you don’t mind, but I had to go rooting around there in your noggin’ to pull all the bits of lead out.”

Her hand instinctively shot to her face, fingertips searching out scar tissue. They were interrupted almost immediately when a mirror, produced from the bag, was thrust into her hands.

“I take pride in my needlework, but you’d better tell me if I left anything out of place.”

Virginia lifted the mirror to stare at her reflection.

“How’d I do?” The man’s voice was hopeful.

She had to admit, she looked pretty damn good for a gal who had just taken a bullet to the head. All the necessary parts were there, and in the right order – thin lips, hazel eyes, a slightly crooked nose, auburn bangs. She moved the mirror to the left, to the right, wincing when she realized her hair had been left tied and pinned to the bag of her head. If the bullet hadn’t given her a headache, she was sure that that would have done the trick.

Lowering the mirror revealed Doc Mitchell’s expectant face. “Thank you…” She rasped.

The Doc’s expression turned sheepish. “Well, I got most of it right anyway. Stuff that mattered.” He straightened his spine. “Okay, no sense in keeping you in bed anymore. Let’s see if we can get you on your feet."

A steady hand found her shoulder and another grasped her side, slowly pulling her upwards into a standing position. Her earlier grapple with the urge to vomit fresh in her mind, Virginia allowed herself to be carefully righted. The doctor waited until she appeared steady on her own two feet to ease his grin on her. She shuffled her weight back and forth experimentally, testing her balance.

“Good,” the old man mused. “Why don’t you walk down to the end of the room? Over by that vigor tester machine there.”

Walking proved to be easier than expected once she was properly oriented, and she closed the distance between herself and the blinking machine with long, purposeful strides. Behind her the doctor chuckled. “Take it slow now. It ain’t a race.”

“Looking good so far,” He noted, ambling over to join her at the machine, a limp painfully visible in his stride. “Go ahead and give that vigor tester a try. We’ll learn right quick if you got back all your faculties.”

The device in question looked more like a repurposed arcade game than a piece of medical equipment. It probably was. There were flashing bulbs and cartoonish depictions of the various aspects of fitness it purported to measure. She reached out and grabbed the lever jutting out of the machine, squeezing with as much pressure as the muscles in her hand would allow. The vigor tester whirred and shuddered, and finally spit out a long ream of paper, which the good doctor snatched up and squinted at.

“Yep, that’s a pretty standard score there. But after what you been through, I’d say that’s good news!” The paper disappeared into his pocket before she could reach for it. “Let’s go into the next room. I’ve got a few more tests I’d like to run.”

Virginia followed with uncharacteristic compliance, lingering in the doorway until the doctor gestured for her to have a seat on a misshapen sofa that groaned and sagged under her weight. Doc Mitchell settled across from her with his own creaks and groans – the soundtrack of old age.

“Well, we know your vitals are good, but that don’t mean them bullets didn’t leave you nuttier than a Bighorner dropping. What do you say we see if your dogs are still barkin’.”

What followed could only be descried, albeit loosely, as a psychological battery. She pliantly endured word-association, inkblot tests, and other questions of dubious purpose. What good the results would do either of them were not obvious to her. Perhaps the more pressing concern was what the old man intended to do if the results weren’t to his liking. She never had to find out. Doc Mitchell transitioned casually into questions about her medical history. “Just a formality,” he assured her, ostensibly to put her at ease. “Ain’t like I expect to find you got a family history of getting’ shot in the head.” He chuckled at his own joke.

A smile cracked Virginia’s dry lips. “After gettin’ shot in the head, Doc, I should be history.”

Her attempt at humor, or maybe the fact that she had regained enough vitality to crack wise, brightened the Doctor’s laughter as he led her towards the door. Before reaching the end of the hall, however, he ducked into another room, reappearing with a worn leather satchel. “Here, these are yours. Was all you had on you when you was brought in. I, er, hope you don’t mind, but I gave the note a look. I thought it might help me find a next of kin, but it was just something about a platinum chip.”

The skin on the back of her neck prickled. A platinum chip. The package! She was Courier Six! She had been delivering a package for the Mojave express when she had been attacked. She saw the man in the checkered suit again. This time he was tossing a poker chip into the air and snatching it deftly back. She clutched her belongings, grinding her teeth to conceal the sudden flood of white-hot anger. That bastard. That job would have been worth a lot of caps. The Doc gave her a strange look and she smiled amiably back at him, swallowing her rage, though it burned on the way down. “Thanks for patchin’ me up, Doc.”

After a long pause, in which his suspicion was made evident, he smiled back. “Don’t mention it. It’s what I’m here for.”

They continued down the hall, but the doctor stopped again before the door. He cleared his throat. “Well, if you’re heading back out there, you ought to have this.”

The object he offered forward, snagged from a small chest near a coat rack, was a mess of metal and leather, blinking lights and a glowing screen. She recognized it immediately as Vault technology.

“They call it a Pip-Boy,” He explained, confirming what she already suspected. “I grew up in one of them Vaults they made before the war. We all got one. Ain’t much use to me now, but you might want such a thing after what you been through.” She opened her mouth to protest, realizing how valuable this particular piece of tech was, how many caps it might be worth out in the wasteland if things got tough. This wasn’t a gift you simply gave to a stranger out of the goodness of your heart. The Doc, though, simply held up his hand and shook his head. “I know what it’s like, having something taken from you.”

Virginia nodded mutely. There was a story in those words, but she didn’t ask after it and he didn’t offer it. In the end they both knew more than if either of them had. She wasn’t sure what it was he thought had been taken from her, but she could feel the loss of it keenly. She accepted the Pip-Boy without a word, strapping the contraption to her arm with some difficulty. After the last strap had been secured the static on the screen cleared, displaying her vital readings on an all-too cheery cartoon of the Vault Tech mascot. The device monitored her heart rate, blood pressure, even her radiation levels. She flexed her arm, wiggling It back and forth to habituate herself to the weight of it.

While she had been mooning over her new piece of tech, the good doctor had retrieved another treasure from the chest. “Put this on too, so the locals don’t pick on you for lacking modesty.” He pushed a neatly-folded blue jumpsuit into her hands. This time Virginia didn’t argue, having become abruptly aware of the fact that she had spent the past hour or so mulling about a stranger’s house in nothing but her underthings. In the dry, oppressive heat of the Mojave she hadn’t even noticed.

“Was my wife’s,” Doc Mitchell elaborated as she stepped into the suit. “I think she was about your size, and she hardly wore it after we left the vault. Felt it was too brazen.”

Virginia nodded, not sure what to say to this. “Thank you” seemed lacking. Fortunately, the doctor kept talking, sparing them both her awkward fumbling with gratitude. “You should talk to Sonny Smiles before you leave town. She can help you learn to fend for yourself in the desert. She’ll likely be at the saloon. I reckon some of the other folks at the saloon might be able to help you out, too. And that metal fella, Victor, who pulled you outta your grave.”

A pause, during which they merely stared at each other.

“Anyway, you ever get hurt out there, you come right back, y’hear? I’ll fix you up. But try not to get killed anymore.”

Virginia was still at a loss, unable to express her thanks or whatever else she might be feeling. She settled on a grin and a flippant salute.

Doc Mitchell saluted back, smiling after her as she strolled out into the wasteland.


End file.
